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UPDATE: Junior Spradlin case headed to circuit courtJul 20, 2011 (Bristol Herald Courier - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- ABINGDON, Va. -- UPDATE July 20 2:20 p.m. The second-degree murder charge against Junior Kemper Spradlin was certified to a grand jury Wednesday afternoon. Washington County General District Judge Joseph Tate, after listening to nearly four hours of witness and medical testimony, decided there was enough evidence to send the case to circuit court. Spradlin, 42, is accused killing Ronald Wade Roberts, 49, in a mid-January fistfight. Spradlin's arrest on April 27 garnered massive attention when police destroyed his mother's Blountville, Tenn., home in a botched standoff, only to realize he wasn't inside. Read tomorrow's Bristol Herald Courier for more information about the preliminary hearing. [email protected] ll 276.645.2549 --- Junior Kemper Spradlin is slated to appear in court today for the first time since police destroyed his mother's home in a botched standoff nearly three months ago. On April 27, federal and local police tried to arrest him on a second-degree murder charge stemming from the mid-January death of Ronald Wade Roberts. Spradlin escaped the resulting standoff and turned himself in to a local jail days later. Today's preliminary hearing in Washington County General District Court will focus on Roberts' death, which happened between 24 and 48 hours after a Jan. 15 fistfight with Spradlin in Abingdon, Va., police say. Few details have been released about the altercation, which happened on the snow-covered front lawn of a Clark Street home in Abingdon. So far, the only firsthand account comes from a jailhouse phone interview with Spradlin. "I didn't throw but two punches ... at most," Spradlin, 42, told the Bristol Herald Courier. "He punched me and I punched him." Roberts's adult daughter, Crystal McDaniel, blames Spradlin. In a brief but tearful late-April phone interview, McDaniel, who did not see the fight, said witnesses claimed Spradlin attacked without provocation. "My dad did not even talk to the guy," she said. Roberts, a 49-year-old Hartford Insurance nuclear inspector from Nathalie, Va., died without throwing a punch, the daughter said. The criminal complaint, which fails to fill in any blanks about the fight, squarely blames Spradlin for Roberts' death. "After an autopsy, the Virginia Office of the Medical Examiner ruled that Roberts' manner of death was a homicide resulting from the punch by Spradlin," wrote Washington County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Austin. The April 27 standoff that destroyed the Blountville, Tenn., home of Spradlin's mother began when police, with homicide-warrant in hand, tried to nab him in a grocery store parking lot. He sped away, leading led police almost directly to his mother's double-wide mobile home on Ellis Road. A SWAT team surrounded the house and for eight hours doused it with tear gas and loudspeaker entreaties to surrender. The siege ended when a bomb squad robot rolled into the living room and dislodged an outdoor-only pyrotechnic tear gas grenade. Moments later, the living room erupted in flames. Spradlin was nowhere to be found when police and firefighters searched the home. Spradlin said he initially sped away in the parking lot because he assumed police intended to arrest him for a probation violation stemming from a Florida assault conviction. On March 31, he pleaded no contest to punching his then-girlfriend in the face while on vacation in northeastern Florida. Days earlier, police spotted a woman walking along a highway in St. John's County. "She was covered in blood from her forehead to the bottom of her T-shirt," an officer wrote. "She was riding in her truck with Junior Spradlin (her boyfriend of two years) and they were having a verbal argument, which turned physical and he proceeded to hit her in the face." She turned down help from the responding medical unit, the report states. Police reported that Spradlin, when arrested, complained she popped in the nose, but that he was fine. Spradlin told the Herald Courier a different version of events: "They took me to jail for battery and I didn't even hit her." [email protected] (276) 645-2549 To see more of the Bristol Herald Courier or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www2.tricities.com/. Copyright (c) 2011, Bristol Herald Courier, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. |